In the mid- to late 1970s, architects around the world began to question the validity of minimal Modernist architecture and design as providing the universal solution to all environments. There was a renewed appreciation of history and historic details and of local and regional historic contexts and a renewed expression of those historicist interests within popular exhibitions of the era, such as MoMA’s renowned display in 1975–76 of 19th-century architectural renderings in watercolour from the École des Beaux-Arts and the First International Architecture Exhibition for the 1980 Venice Biennale, which took as its title and theme “The Presence of the Past.” For this show, contemporary architects were encouraged to create streetscapes that related to traditional architectural environments.

It was particularly in the postmodern 1980s that architects such as Michael Graves, Stanley Tigerman, and Hans Hollein created home accessories for companies such as Alessi in Milan and Swid Powell in the United States. Certain designers, including Sottsass and his Memphis colleague Matteo Thun of Austria, became household names, much as Mies and Breuer had been in the Modernist era, when their furniture designs were reissued by Knoll Associates and other companies. International exhibitions and publications, such as “Design Heute” (1988; “Design Today”), a traveling show organized by the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt, displayed these often-outlandish postmodern creations for members of the public and professionals alike. This individualism reached its apex in the late 1980s, just before the recession of the early 1990s induced design to assume a more-subdued profile and pushed architecture into a more-sober focus on value engineering, an examination of the cost of the service and product provided in relation to its fulfillment of function.

Since then, two pronounced tendencies have been evident in industrial design: one showcases the artistic creations of a talented star designer, and the other relies on teamwork among design and engineering professionals to shape the final product. The former model is still evident in the field of architecture; witness the international celebrity achieved by Frank Gehry when he designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1991–97). In product design and industrial design at the turn of the 21st century, however, few individuals achieved that sort of status. One exception is French designer Philippe Starck, whose plywood bucket chair called the Costes chair (1982) was popularized after he used it extensively in the Café Costes in Paris (1984). Starck continued to design dramatic interiors—most notably for hotels developed by entrepreneur Ian Schrager in the 1980s and ’90s—as well as consumer products such as vases and toothbrushes. In a broadening of the public appeal for “designer” products, the department-store chain Target hired Michael Graves to develop a line of home furnishings, and, after that proved successful, Target enlisted Starck to do the same, with his products reaching stores in 2002. The wide public awareness of Starck’s strong designs was an exception for industrial designers at the time.

The more-prevalent tendency in industrial design is for the designer to be part of a larger team that creates the marketable product. One important firm that embraced this approach was Frog Design. A company founded in 1969 by Hartmut Esslinger, it upheld the founder’s idea that “form follows emotion,” in contrast to the traditional Modernist dictum “form follows function.” Frog Design is best known for its work on Sony Trinitron televisions (1978) and early Apple computers (1984). In the mid-1990s it expanded with offices in Europe and the United States to accommodate more clients, such as Lufthansa, for which it designed gate areas and airplane interiors, and Microsoft, which it advised on the design interface of the Windows XP operating system. Frog Design’s Lufthansa work provides a good example of the firm’s shift from expressing “function” to expressing corporate “emotion.” The ribbed silver curvilinear design of Lufthansa’s business-class seats relates to the tradition of the corrugated aluminum German airliners of the 1920s and ’30s with their bucket seats. The check-in counters and waiting areas blend that early aviation vocabulary with medieval heraldic references, using curved forms to suggest a knight’s shield protecting the check-in agents.

Another teamwork-oriented design firm active at the start of the 21st century was IDEO. Founded in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1991 by Bill Moggridge, Mike Nuttall, and David Kelley, it grew rapidly, adding offices in San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston as well as London, Munich, and Shanghai. With its design studios operating globally, IDEO stressed the team approach to the design process. Its successfully executed projects are diverse and include the overall image and design of Amtrak’s high-speed train Acela (2000), the original computer mouse for Microsoft (1987), modems for 3Com (2000), printers for Apple (1994) and Hewlett-Packard (1999), personal digital assistants for Palm, Inc. (1999), and for Palm’s competitor Handspring (2000), and even everyday items such as toothbrushes for Oral-B (1997) and CD-ROM cases for TDK (2000).

More From Britannica

aerospace industry: Design methods

In their global reach, both Frog Design and IDEO were typical of the design world at the turn of the millennium. Unlike their 20th-century counterparts (at least, perhaps, until the postmodern 1980s), such design firms practice internationally. This has contributed to the blurring of national identity in the look of designed products, with the exception of those few designers, like Starck, whose work is characterized by its individuality, though it is marketed throughout the world and on a very popular level through retail stores such as Target.

Further evidence of the globalization of industrial design can be seen in the automotive industry; many non-U.S. car companies maintain their design offices in California with staff members from around the world. One of the most-noted auto designers is J Mays, an American who trained at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and then worked for German auto companies BMW and Audi in the 1980s. From 1989 to 1993 he served as chief designer of Volkswagen of America, where he devised the concept for the new Beetle (1998), the bulbous form of which recalled the basic lines of the original, designed by Ferdinand Porsche some 60 years earlier. In 1997 Mays was appointed head of Ford’s design studio, which, under his direction, introduced the retro-looking Thunderbird (2002). International boundaries were likewise blurred when German carmaker BMW enlisted American designer Frank Stephenson to create the new Mini (2002), a revival of the iconic British car of the 1960s.